


I Don't Know Any Lullabies

by Moonsheen



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bullshit Fantasy Medicine, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dedue cameo, Dedue deserves a raise, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mid-Canon, Post-Gronder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Schizophrenia, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23007508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/pseuds/Moonsheen
Summary: Immediately post-Gronder, someone has to convince Dimitri to clean up his act.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 9
Kudos: 165





	I Don't Know Any Lullabies

They pull back to Myrddin. It’s the safest point of fortification. Cyril sends word: the ragged Alliance force has retreated expertly. Shamir sends word: the Imperial forces swarmed in the forests past Gronder, closing rank around their fleeing Emperor and her guard. They make no move to press back against the Kingdom forces. They are just as overextended. They will all pull back to lick their wounds. For now. Always, for now.

‘Off to sulk, like children sent to bed with no supper. How war reduces us to our basest selves.’ The thought is errant and strange, and sounds so very like Sothis that Byleth would smile if her face were made for it. But exhaustion takes precedence over the echoes in her head.

Exhaustion, and the king listing in the saddle against her back. His weight presses against her as the horse jounces its way along the secured roads. In full armor, and nearly dead weight, it takes some effort to keep her back straight. But she chose this particular charge. After Dimitri grasped her hand, in that freezing rain, he was loathe to let go. For expediency, Byleth insisted to Gilbert and Dedue they simply load the injured king up with her, and get moving as quick as possible.

He is feverish, aching from his injuries. A mess of poultices and vulneraries have staunched the worst of the wounds, but it will only do so much until they can turn him over to Manuela’s professional care. Every now and again he murmurs muzzly, indistinct apologies. To her, for having to bear the weight of this foolish man. To Rodrigue, for having to die for him. To Felix, for… he never finished that sentence. To Glenn. To his father. To her again… the list went on and on, until at last his head simply fell against her shoulder and he lapsed instead into ragged breath. When she at last delivers him to Manuela’s makeshift clinic, he is unsteady and quiet. Barely awake, he clutches at her wrist as they lead him away. It is a sign of how weak that he is, that he can at last be convinced to release her as Gilbert and Dedue guide him into Myrddin's barracks, where Manuela’s set up shop.

Byleth wonders, not for the first time, if there is ever silence in Dimitri’s mind.

The next few hours passed in an unsettled haze. Byleth takes it as she has most things in life. Blank action. There are other wounded to count. There are battalions to restructure. Former students to comfort. She passes Annette crying in Mercedes’ arms (“I saw his face when I-- oh, Mercie--I really killed him!”), she directs a wild-eyed Felix (“Is it true? Tell me! Tell me now!”) and a bandaged Sylvain (“Shit, Felix, wait-- wait--”) to the chapel, where they will no doubt be preserving Rodrigue’s body for transport. She directs a white-faced Ingrid (“Is it true? It is, isn’t it? Please, they need me.”) to Sylvain and Felix. She checks in on Ashe, counting provisions (“Someone has to.”) She receives a scouting report from Cyril (“Uh, who am I reporting to now?”). She takes stock of the living.

As she’s pulling her maps out from the convoy, a hand closes over her shoulder.

Seteth. The hem of his church robes are streaked with mud and wyvern’s blood. But somehow he makes it look as stern and austere as ever. Only Seteth could return from an intense aerial battle looking only mildly rumpled. His hair isn’t even terribly windblown. He is, truly, a mystery for that alone.

“Enough,” he says, “You will be no good to anyone if you push this state any further.”

For all his strangeness, Byleth feels a great warmth for him. He cares a great deal, for all his secrets.

“I’m fine,” she says, tonelessly. “Really.”

Seteth curls his lip in the beginnings of a scowl. “Says someone who is showing obvious signs of shock. Have you even been to the medical station?”

She’d dropped off Dimitri, hadn’t she? “Manuela’s hands are pretty full.”

Flayn appears on her other side, tugging at her sleeve. “So let me.”

They march her to the bridge’s old watch office. Byleth has the distinct impression she’s being moved under guard. Seteth stands watch outside the door while Flayn coaxes her out of her sodden armor and into a dry Church robes. Flayn fusses -- but in the most efficient way, with healing magic that is warm and fresh and makes Byleth keenly aware that she did not come out of this fight wholly unscathed.

“We are so glad that you’re safe, professor,” says Flayn. Byleth blinks at her. Flayn reads the confusion with no trouble at all. She smiles in that gentle, wise way that reminds Byleth she has never gotten a straight answer about her age. “Have I not said? You are like family to us. We will take care of one another. Even if it means we must weather another war. Now, please. Rest.”

At some point, Byleth falls asleep in her chair. At some point, she wakes up again. Flayn has left her tea and some biscuits. The light filtering through the narrow windows has dimmed, telling her it is now late: the bells outside tell her some hours have passed, though the rain drums steadily outside.

In the closed space of the office, Byleth unrolls her nearly forgotten maps, runs her hand back through her hair, and ponders her next move.

Dedue appears at the door. His mouth set in a line more dour than usual, though his eyes are soft with concern.

“I hate to bother you,” he begins.

Byleth is still dressed in her borrowed robes. She looks more like a priest than a mercenary. Awkward without her sword belt. ‘Like a market-discount Archbishop,’ a bitter voice in her head echoes.

A sharper, more Sothis-like voice responds, ‘This is not the time to be wallowing in self-pity! The little ones look to you! Up, child! Up!’

There are yet bigger concerns. Byleth does her best to push that concern outwards, into her eyes. This is the last place she wants to be mistaken as callous.

“Dimitri?” she asks, without preamble, biting back her silent frustration at how dead her voice sounds. It never used to bother her. She never used to care enough to notice it.

Dedue lets it pass unremarked. He understands better than most. He knows how to read the way her fingers bite into the door frame. “He is well,” he assures. Then amends: “Well enough, that is. Professor Manuela has assured us the injury is not fatal. He should be able to to travel monastery for further treatment, provided…”

Dedue’s jaw twitches.

“Provided?” prompts Byleth.

Dedue sighs. He’s tired enough his frustration comes through. “It’s best if you see for yourself, professor.”

He leads her to the bridge’s barracks, converted for the wounded. It’s late. The rain continues in earnest. The bridge is not exactly quiet, but it is calmer than when they first arrived. A night watch has been set up. By Gilbert -- or Seteth. She can’t see the pegasus and wyvern knights patrolling the sky, but she knows they must be there. Ferdinand and Dorothea keep watch on the parapets. Byleth wonders if any of her students have gotten any sleep at all. Mercedes and Annette tend to the wounded. They look up questioningly as Dedue leads her through the rows. Byleth shakes her head quickly. No. Their duties are more important right now.

She is all too aware of the eyes of the wounded on her. She can hear someone breathe, dryly, “....Goddess.”

‘Not quite,’ thinks Byleth. A few of them reach with bandaged hands for the hem of her robes as she passes. She allows it, as uncomfortable as it makes her. If it gives them comfort, who is she to deny them? Bewildered by pain, they don’t know she’s just an empty-eyed mercenary with no heart.

Dimitri has been sequestered in the old captain’s quarters. Lorenz had been happy enough to pull rank to relieve the House Acheron affiliated guard captain of the honor and take the post for the time being. Lorenz had been less pleased with the symbolism involved in relinquishing it to the King of Faerghus and his forces (“But is the duty of the nobility to cede their hospitalities for traveling royalty”). Byleth hesitates in front of the door. She glances at Dedue.

“Just me?”

Dedue nods.

“Surely he’d want you--”

Dedue shuts his eyes to mask his frustration. “I’ve tried.”

“--my turn, then. Get some rest, Dedue.”

Dedue bows. “Thank you, professor.”

The candles burn low. She finds Dimitri draped over the bed, head tilted limply backwards, hair a matted mess obscuring most of his face. One of his arms hangs loose. They stripped his armor. It lies in a pile against the wall, along with his leathers. Manuela it seems was able to coax some cooperation from him, because Byleth can see he has poulstices pressed up and down his chest -- with hint of a thicker set fastened to his back, where the girl stabbed him. These areas have been wiped clean, but the hand that hangs loose is blackened from mud and from soot.

At his feet is a wooden wash basin. Untouched, and now cold.

“You shouldn’t press your back into the chair like that,” says Byleth. “You’ll reopen it.”

Dimitri stirs, turning his head just enough she can see his eye is tracking her.

“Professor…” he rasps, in a low voice. It has none of the rumble in it she’d grown used to.

She kneels next to the basin and casts a quick spell for heat. She touched the water carefully, waiting for it to reach an acceptable temperature. She can smell the elixirs mixed into the water. To disinfect, and promote faster healing. “I’m sure Professor Manuela’s covered the basics, but you need to keep those wounds clean. Healing magic can only do so much. If you keep irritating it, it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

“I…”

She takes his face in her hands, and pulls it upright. He lets her, with little more than a soft groan.

“Come on, Dimitri,” she says. “Back to the living.”

* * *

The first night they’d camped together in the ruins of Garegg Mach, she remembers the rabbit.

Dimitri spotted it out of the corner of his eye. He caught it, bare handed, and broke its neck with a single flex of his palm. Before she could blink, he’d torn into it with the immediateness of a starving hound, neither bothering to skin it or set it over a flame. Clearly, it was not a new maneuver. It’d fallen on her to wrest it away from him, before his former classmates could return with their own supplies. She’d dumped her waterskin over his head. He’d snarled viciously, but she’d moved quickly out of his range and was yet useful to his revenge. By the time their classmates returned, the rabbit was roasting proper over a flame -- but everyone had to pretend they couldn’t see the half wiped smear of blood down his chin. Only Felix seemed unshaken by the sight.

“You’ll need to wash up,” she says, in the present.

He stares at her, blankly. For the first time she notices the box full of bath sundries, scattered near the door, soap, wash clothes, fresh bandages, herbs. He must have put up quite a fight about this, earlier. No wonder Dedue fetched her.

“I’ll help,” she says, undaunted. “Will you let me? Can’t promise I’ll be gentle, but I can make it fast.”

She pushes a little bit of hair away from his face. He makes a soft, cracked noise.

“As you will,” he allows, at last.

He lets her strip off the rest of his underclothes and the used poultices and guide him into the warm water, moving like a man lost in a waking dream. Once, he would’ve died from embarrassment in his school days. Now, he simply allows it in a grim haze. It is all a very matter of fact, mercenary process. For once, her blank face is to her benefit, though after a life-time of living in close quarters with a mercenary company, naked men hardly surprise her, especially when wounded. As he kneels in the tub, the map of scars along his chest and back do give her pause though. For a moment, it’s difficult to determine where all the damage lies. She presses the washcloth, carefully, to the one on his shoulder.

“They’re old,” mumbles Dimitri, slumping in the water with little care. “Most of them.”

He always trained in full school uniform, despite how much he hated the heat.

“Is this really necessary?”

“Had many baths in the last five years?”

“I mean,” he begins, swallowing. “Do I deserve such--”

Byleth scoops up a cup full of water and dumps it over his head.

“Don’t wallow,” she says, stiffly. “Now’s not the time.”

He stares up at her through his dripping hair. His lips move in wonderment around the sentence he failed to finish.

They both forgot he was still wearing his eyepatch. “I’m not actually very good at this.”

His ragged little laugh is, in that moment, the best sound she’s heard in ages. “Neither am I.”

“Good. I’m going to wash your hair now. Tell me if it hurts.”

“Very well.”

She undoes the eyepatch. The wound under it is old and ugly -- there is nothing left but an empty socket, and a knotted mass of scar tissue in place of an eye. The best that can be said is that it has healed over. His squeezes his remaining eye shut, as she brushes the damp matted pieces out of the way. His once pale, wheat-gold hair has become a beaten brass from years of neglect. She works through it with the flakey soap she rescued from the scattered bath supplies. The soap must have had some herbs caked into it. A medicinal scent soon fills the room. He sighs. She can’t tell if she’s leaning into her palms or collapsing into it.

Her fingers catch the ridge of another scar, a jagged line across his scalp, hidden by his hair. She pauses.

“Another old one,” he sighs, without opening his eye. “From Duscur.”

“Ah.” It must have been a cruel injury. It’s several inches long. It must’ve needed stitches. It must have bled like nothing else. And he would have been so much smaller, then.

“Glenn got the worst of it.”

He looks up then, just a crack, focusing on some point on the other side of the room. Byleth, on instinct, steps sideways to block his view of whatever phantom could be looking back.

“Just me, right now.”

He pushes his head back into her hands. “Yes,” he breathes.

She promised to be fast, but it’s a bigger job than expected. By the time she’s worked through five years of dirt, sweat, and blood, the basin is muddy, and Dimitri’s hair is pale under her fingers.

“Up,” she says, pulling his arm over her shoulder.

“Professor,” he stumbles. “Perhaps--” Ah. A hint of his old proprietary nature. He’s too weak to flush, but he purses his lips in alarm.

“Little late to complain,” she repeats. “Up.”

So, like her father once hauled a drunken freelancer from the barstool, she hauls the uncrowned, unclothed King of Faerghus to bed. She pulls the furs up to his waist. It quiets him, some.

The fresh wounds on his back are shallower than they once were, thanks again to Manuela’s magic and the elixirs in washbasin, but it is common practice to never magic a wound shut too soon, lest the caster have missed a piece of debris, or infection set in deep in the bone. Byleth is not the expert Manuela is. She will turn him back over to her in the morning -- but for the time being she takes care in drying and redressing them. A little field medicine will do. A mercenary craft.

Her hand stops over the deepest wound, the one that jammed his shoulder blade. The girl had found the space between his plate armor, but had lacked the strength to drive it deep enough to be fatal. Her second blow, more ferocious, more close range, would have struck true.

He feels her palm, bristling under her. “Rodrigue?”

She goes back to the dressings. “In the chapel. In state.”

“Felix?”

“There with him.”

The hollowness returns to Dimitri’s eye. “One more thing I’ve taken from him.”

Fate, bitter as it was, had shown itself to her. He doesn’t know. He never will, not the way she does: There is no timeline where Dimitri or Rodrigue both survived the ambush. Byleth had been too far away before the girl struck. She could never get into range in time to prevent the first blow. She had tried, as best she could, as exhausted as he was, to do what she could not do for her father. But between those two lives, Rodrigue would choose Dimitri. And as for her…

“Fate’s design,” she whispers. Ah, Sothis. She missed her scolding. Such a comfort they’d been. “You took nothing, Dimitri. Didn’t he say? It was his choice. There’s the fate imposed on us, and the fate we choose for ourselves. I don’t think he had any regrets.”

Dimitri shivers. “Then that’s not him by the hearth.”

Byleth doesn’t look. She doesn’t have to. It’s just the two of them. It has been since she entered the room.

“No.”

“Then perhaps might I be permitted to rest--” Dimitri pushes his face into his arms. His voice is light and distant now. He breathes out without wincing. His voice comes from farther and farther away, weighed down by an exhaustion that goes back much farther than this battle. “--for just a moment.”

“If that’s what you want.” Byleth drags the furs the rest of the way over his shoulders. “I’ll send for Manuela--”

But before she can pull away, she feels a tug at her sleeve. Dimitri’s hand -- no longer caked with dried blood, nails still worn down, calloused and scarred, clutching at her borrowed tunic. It’s not unlike the wounded in the barracks grasped at her -- but somehow far less worshipful, a far more personal plea.

“Haunt me a little while longer, will you?” he whispers.

“Dimitri.” Byleth shifts in alarm. “I’m not--”

He fumbles weakly for her hand.

“I know,” he says, “That’s how I know it’s safe.”

In the early hours, Manuela will return to check on them. With her will come Dedue, with Gilbert, with the rest of the officers. By dawn, they will organize their withdrawal to Garegg Mach, count their heads, their losses, their next step. She will find all the little ones. Her students. Her friends. She will offer Felix the deepest condolences. For his father, and for a deeper thing he will never quite understand. But for now, she drags up a chair and sits beside Dimitri. In this moment he is not a prince, nor a king, nor even one of her students: simply someone in need. Even if she cannot offer him the comfort of a beating heart, she can at least...

“Don’t know any lullabies,” she admits. The only one she ever heard was in the lap of the Archbishop, and she’s not sure that could be called real, either.

He once said he liked her smile. Heartless and tired, she can’t quite summon it. So she reaches up and pushes up the side of her mouth. She wants him to know she’d like to be tender with him, even if it doesn’t come naturally.

It inspires another, precious, weak laugh. “That face is comfort enough.”

She rests her hand in his drying hair, and feels his breath begin to steady. She wonders how long it has been since either of them have truly slept.


End file.
